Texas-Style Smoked Brisket

In Texas, barbecue is about beef: specifically brisket, the cut by which any joint is judged. Brisket has become a favorite of restaurant chefs, too, hence the smoke ribbons and Hank Williams songs drifting out of restaurants as far away as Brooklyn. But can great brisket be made at home? I devoted a weekend to the task and learned that with a few key ingredients— salt, pepper, patience, and advice from Aaron Franklin, my neighbor and the pitmaster at Franklin Barbecue in Austin—swoonworthy results are doable. You just have to take the time—12 smoky hours.

Brisket (from the cow's breast or lower chest) is rich in connective tissue, so it requires a low-and-slow process to relax the muscle into tender goodness—a pleasure that can't be achieved with a quicker method. Luckily, those first unforgettable bites are worth the weekend. So let's get started.

A grill or analog thermometer (we recommend it even if your grill has one)

Preparation

1 Order the brisket You'll have to special-order your brisket ahead of time (the brisket already sold at the meat counter is typically not whole). You should be able to do this at almost any butcher shop or at a grocery store meat counter. Ask for a brisket that is as evenly thick as possible, with the surrounding fat trimmed to 1/4" thick (this protects the meat from drying out while cooking).

2 Season the meat An hour before preparing the grill, place brisket on a rimmed baking sheet. Mix salt and pepper in a small bowl and season the meat all over (it should look like sand stuck to wet skin but without being cakey). Let meat sit at room temperature for 1 hour.

3 Prepare your grill Meanwhile, soak 6 cups wood chips in a bowl of water for at least 30 minutes or overnight. Leave in water throughout the cooking process. Keep remaining 2 cups chips dry. Light only 1 grill burner to medium (if using a 3-burner grill, light burner on either end). Make sure drip tray is empty, as a lot of fat will render. Place smoker box over the lit burner, add 1/2 cup soaked wood chips to box, and close grill. Adjust heat as needed to keep temperature at 225-250°F. We recommend using a stand-alone thermometer, even if your grill has one, to ensure an accurate reading. Stick it through the gap between the lid and base of the grill (or set it on the grill's upper shelf, though this is not ideal, as it requires opening the lid more frequently). The wood chips should begin to smolder and release a steady stream of smoke. How long this takes depends on how wet your chips are and the heat of your grill. To get more smoke without increasing grill heat, add a few dry chips to the soaked ones.

4 Maintain the heat Place brisket, fatty side up, on grill grate as far away from lit burner as possible. Cover grill and smoke meat, resisting the urge to open grill often, as this will cause the temperature to fluctuate. Adjust heat as needed to keep temperature steady at 225-250°F. Check wood chips every 45 minutes or so, and add soaked chips by 1/2-cupfuls as needed to keep smoke level constant.

5 Know when it's done Keep smoking the brisket, rotating every 3 hours and flipping as needed if top or bottom is coloring faster than the other, until meat is very tender but not falling apart and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of meat registers 195-205°F, 10-12 hours total.*

*Need a cheat? If you just don't want to spend your whole day at the grill, here's a fail-safe, Aaron Franklin- endorsed alternate method that will deliver similarly glorious results: Smoke brisket on grill until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of meat registers 150-170°F, 5-6 hours. Wrap brisket in foil, place on a baking sheet, and cook in a 250°F oven until meat reaches the same 195-205°F internal temperature, 4-6 hours longer. What's important is getting that smoky flavor into the meat, and 5-6 hours on the grill should do it. After that point, you're simply getting the meat cooked through.

DO AHEAD: Brisket is best shortly off the grill, but you can still get good results smoking it up to 3 days ahead. Let cool for an hour before wrapping in foil and chilling. To serve, reheat meat, still wrapped, in a 325°F oven until warmed through.

6 Dig in Transfer brisket to a carving board and let rest at least 30 minutes. Slice brisket against the grain 1/4" thick.

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Reviews

Have not tried the oven method but we've done 3 briskets this way on our Green Egg this summer, by Aaron Franklin's recipe, so I just wanted to add a couple of notes:
1) You can get a whole brisket at most Costco's, although you'll have to trim it yourself. (Aaron Franklin has a video on how to do this.)
2) Ours took much, much longer than 10-12 hours. One took 19 hours! It was still juicy and delicious. Why did it take so long? No idea--but Aaron Franklin says in his video that this sometimes happens. So if your brisket isn't done in the 10-12 hr time period, don't panic. (And the oven method sounds like a great fix for this!)
Highly, highly recommend trying this brisket! And for those who said it was dry: perhaps you trimmed too much fat...

Perfect directions on temp and method. Our 7 lbs brisket got rave reviews from our guests. Had to laugh at the soaking the wood chunks. Testing has proven that if you soak your chips (chunks) for 24 hrs they will last appox 90 seconds longer than if you don't soak them. Guess that is why they made boat hulls out of wood back in the day.

This seems to be one of the better recipes for smoking brisket, its simple but effective, you can cook in an oven to speed up the process. There are many ways to set up the smoker. What I like is the use of the oven to finish the cooking, this way while meat is in the oven, you can entertain your guest. What a great idea.

This is the way to do it for sure. Can also use a Weber by making a "C" ring of charcoal around the rim and placing wood chips on top. Light one end and let the coals burn around the ring like a fuse. Big plus if you have a Sous Vide, I smoke the brisket for 4+ hours on the Weber to get a nice smoke ring then put it in the Sous Vide at 175 for 10 hours, then increase to 203 for one hour. I finish off back on the Weber for just a bit to freshen up the bark. Awesome

Our brisket
That art in the smoker
Mesquite be thy wood
Thy low heat come
And when thou art done
I will wrap and sweat until tender
Give us this day our cross grain cuts
And forgive us inclusion of thy fat cap
As we forgive those that also indulge in thy fat cap
And lead us not into dryness
But deliver us from mediocrity
Amen

I followed the recipe for a gas grill and smoked for about 7 hours before refrigerating overnight. The next morning the brisket went in the oven for about 5 hours. I needed to keep the grill temp a bit higher at just under 300 to keep good smoke going but the results were very good. Nice smoke flavor from the apple wood chips. Not at all dried out even after 12 hours at close to 300 degrees.

I bought a smoker because of this recipe and made it my summer project. I followed the recipe as written and was so disappointed. The flat, first cut part of the brisket was so very dry, the pointe cut fared much better, but overall this was not worth investing time and money. I had many guests over, after all this is quite a large brisket, but it met with mixed reviews. My suggestion is that you go to the beer braised peach glazed brisket recipe on this site and start that off on the smoker, as per other reviewers suggestion & finish off with the braising liquid recipe and you will be praised & thanked for your efforts. I learned that the key to smoking a brisket, is that the brisket needs a 1/4"-1/2" fat cap on it, so that it remains juicy. You will have a nice smokey flavor & an incredibly tender brisket by braising it.

Being a Texas smoked brisket, I bet a lot of Texans (like me) have wood burning smokers and smoking this puppy low and slow on one of those would be the best. I add that some of the best BBQ joints that get raves for smoked brisket in Texas use salt and pepper only (like in this recipe) and no complicated rubs. The smoke is the seasoning. Texas is the home of smoked brisket with Central Texas having the best.